Nine years later, we are still haunted by Sept. 11, and in some ways it’s getting worse. All summer, a shrill debate over whether to build a mosque near the Ground Zero site was fueled by pundits on the right, who drummed up a chorus of invective that made it impossible to focus on the modest facts of the case. Then in the days leading up to the 11th, a church in Gainesville, Fla., sparked a firestorm — almost literally — by inviting Christians to come by on the anniversary for a ceremonial burning of the Koran. The Dove World Outreach Center — a misnomer if ever there was one — has made a cottage industry of its Islam-bashing, promoting its old-fashioned hate crusade with the most modern weapons — YouTube, podcasts, Facebook, and blogs (“Top Ten Reasons to Burn a Koran”).

Obviously, this was an act of naked self-promotion as much as a coherent statement about religion. Its instigator, the church’s pastor, Terry Jones, based his crusade on a series of mind-bending assumptions, including his belief that Muslims are always in bad moods (he asks, on camera, “Have you ever really seen a really happy Muslim?”). But for all of its cartoonish qual

ity, and despite his cancellation under pressure Thursday, the timing of this media circus has been a disaster for US foreign policy and the troops we ask to support it. At the exact moment that we want to act as the careful steward of peace in the Middle East, minds around the world have been filled with the image of Korans in America being tossed onto pyres.

For better or worse, there is not much anybody can do about religious extremists who offend decency, yet stay within the letter of the law. The same Constitution that confirms the right to worship freely protects the right to worship badly. But September is also the anniversary of the 1787 document that framed our government, and in this season of displaced Tea Party anger, it is worth getting right with our history. There is nothing wrong with the desire to go back to the founding principles that made this nation great — but we should take the time to discover what those principles actually were.

For most Americans, the Koran remains a deeply foreign book, full of strange invocations. Few non-Muslims read it, and most of us carry assumptions about a work of scripture that we assume to be

hostile, though it affirms many of the earlier traditions of Christianity and Judaism. Like all works of scripture, it is complex and sometimes contradictory, full of soothing as well as frightening passages. But for those willing to make a genuine effort, there are important areas of overlap, waiting to be found.

As usual, the Founders were way ahead of us. They thought hard about how to build a country of many different faiths. And to advance that vision to the fullest, they read the Koran, and studied Islam with a calm intelligence that today’s over-hyped Americans can only begin to imagine. They knew something that we do not. To a remarkable degree, the Koran is not alien to American history — but inside it.

No book states the case more plainly than a single volume, tucked away deep within the citadel of Copley Square — the Boston Public Library. The book known as Adams 281.1 is a copy of the Koran, from the personal collection of John Adams. There is nothing particularly ornate about this humble book, one of a collection of 2,400 that belonged to the second president. But it tells an important story, and reminds us how worldly the Founders were, and how impervious to the fanaticisms that spring up like dandelions whenever religion and politics are mixed. They, like we, lived in a complicated and often hostile global environment, dominated by religious strife, terror, and the bloodsport of competing empires. Yet better than we, they saw the

world as it is, and refused the temptation to enlarge our enemies into Satanic monsters, or simply pretend they didn’t exist.

Reports of Korans in American libraries go back at least to 1683, when an early settler of Germantown, Pa., brought a German version to these shores. Despite its foreign air, Adams’s Koran had a strong New England pedigree. The first Koran published in the United States, it was printed in Springfield in 1806.

Why would John Adams and a cluster of farmers in the Connecticut valley have bought copies of the Koran in 1806? Surprisingly, there was a long tradition of New Englanders reading in the Islamic scripture. The legendary bluenose Cotton Mather had his faults, but a lack of curiosity about the world was not one of them. Mather paid scrupulous attention to the Ottoman Empire in his voracious reading, and cited the Koran often in passing. True, much of it was in his pinched voice — as far back as the 17th century, New England sailors were being kidnapped by North African pirates, a source of never ending vexation, and Mather denounced the pirates as “Mahometan Turks, and Moors and Devils.” But he admired Arab and Ottoman learning, and when Turks in Constantinople and Smyrna succeeded in inoculating patients against smallpox, he led a public campaign to do the same in Boston (a campaign for which he was much vilified by those who called inoculation the “work of the Devil,” merely because of its Islamic origin). It was one of his finer moments.

Other early Americans denounced Islam — surprisingly, Roger Williams, whom we generally hold up as a model of tolerance, expressed the hope that “the Pope and Mahomet” would be “flung in to the Lake that burns with Fire and Brimstone.” But Rhode Island, and ultimately all of New England, proved hospitable to the strangers who came in the wake of the Puritans — notably, the small Jewish congregation that settled in Newport and built Touro Synagogue, America’s oldest. And in theory — if not often in practice (simply because there were so few) — that toleration extended to Muslims as well.

This theory was eloquently expressed around the time the Constitution was written. One of its models was the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, which John Adams had helped to create, and which, in the words of one of its drafters, Theophilus Parsons, was designed to ensure “the most ample of liberty of conscience” for “Deists, Mahometans, Jews and Christians.”

As the Founders deliberated over what types of people would ultimately populate the strange new country they were creating, they cited Muslims as an extreme of foreign-ness whom it would be important to protect in the future. Perhaps, they daydreamed, a Muslim or a Catholic might even be president someday? Like everything, they debated it. Some disapproved, but Richard Henry Lee insisted that “true freedom embraces the Mahometan and Gentoo [Hindu] as well as the Christian religion.” George Washington went out of his way to praise Muslims on several occasions, and suggested that he would welcome them at Mount Vernon if they were willing to work. Benjamin Franklin argued that Muslims should be able to preach to Christians if we insisted on the right to preach to them. Near the end of his life, he impersonated a Muslim essayist, to mock American hypocrisy over slavery.

Thomas Jefferson, especially, had a familiarity with Islam that borders on the astonishing. Like Adams, he owned a Koran, a 1764 English edition that he bought while studying law as a young man in Wi

lliamsburg, Va. Only two years ago, that Koran became the center of a controversy, when the first Muslim ever elected to Congress, Keith Ellison, a Democrat from Minnesota, asked if he could place his hand on it while taking his oath of office — a request that elicited tremendous screeches from the talk radio extremists. Jefferson even tried to learn Arabic, and wrote his Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom to protect “the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination.”

Jefferson and Adams led many of our early negotiations with the Islamic powers as the United States lurched into existence. A favorable treaty was signed with Morocco, simply because the Moroccans considered the Americans ahl-al-kitab, or “people of the book,” similar to Muslims, who likewise eschewed the idolatry of Europe’s ornate state religions. When Adams was president, a treaty with Tripoli (Libya) insisted that the United States was “not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion” and therefore has “no character of enmity against the laws, religion and tranquility of Mussulmen.”

There was another important group of Americans who read the Koran, not as a legal sourcebook, or a work of exoticism, but as something very different — a reminder of home. While evidence is fragmentary, as many as 20 percent of African-American slaves may have come from Islamic backgrounds. They kept their knowledge of the Koran alive through memory, or chanted suras, or, in rare cases, smuggled copies of the book itself. In the 1930s, when WPA workers were interviewing elderly African-Americans in Georgia’s Sea Islands, they were told of an ancestor named Bilali who spoke Arabic and owned a copy of the Koran — a remarkable fact when we remember that it was a crime for slaves to read. In the War of 1812, Bilali and his fellow Muslims helped to defend America from a British attack, inverting nearly all of our stereotypes in the process.

In 1790, as the last of the original 13 states embraced the Constitution, and the United States finally lived up to its name, George Washington visited that state — unruly Rhode Island — and its Jewish congregation at Newport. The letter he wrote to them afterwards struck the perfect note, and drained much of the antiforeign invective that was already poisoning the political atmosphere, only a year into his presidency. Addressing himself to “the children of the Stock of Abraham” (who, in theory, include Muslims as well as Jews), the president of the United States offered an expansive vision indeed:

“May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

For democracy to survive, it required consent; a willingness to surrender some bits of cultural identity to preserve the higher goal of a working community. Washington’s letter still offers a tantalizing prospect, especially as his successor turns from the distracting noise of Gainesville to the essential work of building peace in the Middle East, for all of the children of the Stock of Abraham.

Ted Widmer is the Beatrice and Julio Mario Santo Domingo director and librarian of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.
© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.

Respected Pastor Terry Jones,

I have read your worldwide call for the burning of the Quran on this coming 11th of September. Your message stated that you are a pastor of one of the churches in Florida in the United States of America.

As an Arab Catholic priest from Damascus (Syria), I wondered what would be your objective, as an American pastor, for such a call?

I wondered, and I ask you: What are your responsibilities as a pastor?
Are you really a Christian pastor serving God in a church in America?
Or are you merely a layperson from America who is pretending to be in the service of Christ?

Did you give in to your nationalism (Americanism) rather than giving in to your Christianity?

What is your aim with that call?

(Do you wish) to further fuel hatred among people? Is that consistent with (the teachings of) Jesus, whom you represent in your eyes and the eyes of many others?
Tell me, is there in the character of Jesus, in his words or in his actions anything that would remotely justify even a hint of promoting disdain and hatred among people?

Have you forgotten that Jesus was completely for love, forgiveness and peace? Have you forgotten what he taught us when he told his disciples and the people after them to tell God the heavenly Father of all to “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who wrong us”? You overlooked or forgot that when Jesus was hanging on the cross and being subjected to insults and vile words, he raised his voice, saying, “O Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Who, then, do you represent or who are you trying to guide with this call of yours?

Isn’t it enough what has been happening since September 11, 2001: the killing, destruction, displacement and starvation of hundreds of millions of people throughout the world, from Palestine – the land of Jesus – by your leaders in particular, headed by George Bush, who was claiming direct communication with God?

Wouldn’t you agree with me that with your call (to burn the Quran), you have demonstrated that you are really unfamiliar with Jesus and that you desperately need to re-discover him again to be a true Christian pastor who calls, like Jesus, for the comprehensive love and full respect for every human being and a commitment to the full and wonderful teachings that call upon all believers, without exception, to always stand beside the poor, the oppressed and the disadvantaged?

My brother Pastor Terry Jones. Can you tell me, honestly, if Jesus came today, whose side would he take?

Is it the side of the powerful and arrogant oppressors who dominate the world and endlessly plunder its resources, violate its laws and international treaties, and kill people in their countries and destroy houses on top of their owners and turn them into refugees across the earth? Or is it the side of those who are oppressed, the disadvantaged, hungry, and homeless?

Did you forget what Jesus himself would say on the Day of Judgment to each person in front of him: “All that you did to one of my brothers, you actually did to me”?

I wonder if you have overlooked or forgotten that Jesus did not point in that speech on the Day of Judgment to the religion of any of those mistreated persons. He only referred to everyone as belonging to the human race and to his standing with the deprived, the weak, and the oppressed in this world.

So how could you as an American Christian pastor stand with the oppressors from your country whose injustice has spread around the world?

Aren’t you afraid of when you appear before Jesus on Judgment Day and you are burdened with a heavy conscience, like your leaders who are blinded by the gods of power, money, control and greed?

My brother Pastor Terry. Do you think I am being unfair if I conclude that your hatred toward Islam is what drove you to such a reprehensible call for the burning of Islam’s holy book, the Quran?

But let me ask you, as a Syrian Roman Catholic priest: What do you know about Islam? It appears to me from your call to burn the Quran that you are ignorant of Christ and Christianity, and that makes me believe that you are also ignorant of Islam and Muslims.

Believe me, it is not my intention to indict you and it is not my intention to engage with you in a religious debate about Christianity or Islam. However, after I prayed for a long time, let me suggest for both of us to make a joint effort on this coming September 11.

You might ask me what effort can we do jointly when you are in Florida and I’m in Damascus?

Here is my suggestion.

I invite you to visit Syria, where you will be my guest and the guest of many of my Muslim and Christian friends. Syria is a country populated mostly by Muslims and in which Christians are indigenous to the land and have lived side-by-side with Muslims for centuries and centuries.

Come and don’t worry about anything.

Come and you will find out about Islam and Muslims what will comfort you, please you, surprise you, and even lead you, from where you are today in Florida, to invite all people to live in respect, love and cooperation among all people.

This is what people need rather than the un-Christian call to fuel the sentiment of hatred and division.

Come to Syria and you will be amazed by the good nature of people and their faith, their relations, friendly cooperation and openness toward all strangers.

Come to Damascus to witness and live an experience that is not in your mind nor the mind or expectation of all the churches of the West or their bishops, pastors, and clergymen.

Come to see and hear two choruses, Christian and Muslim, singing together during Christian and Islamic holidays to praise Allah, the One God, who created us all, and to whom we all return.

My brother Pastor Terry.

I call you my brother and I am serious about calling you brother and about my invitation to you. I await a word (of reply) from you. Trust me that you will find a brother in Damascus, actually many brothers.

Please contact me and don’t delay. I am waiting for you in Damascus.

I ask God to make our anticipated meeting the beginning of a long and interesting path that we undertake together with other brothers in Damascus and around the world.

How desperate is the need of our world for bright roads.

Come, the road to Damascus is waiting for you.

Father Elias Zahlawi

The great Western powers look down on Muslims and consider us the greatest threat to civilization today. Our brothers and sisters are being oppressed and killed overseas. Our private schools are having difficulties keeping their doors open because they lack the necessary finances. More Muslim children attend secular public schools than those with Islamic environments and teachings. Domestic violence runs rampant in our own homes, where women should be treated with equal rights and respect. Most converts to Islam in America de-convert within the same year. Countries where we are the majority suffer from dwindling resources, civil unrest, occupation, and corruption. We cry for the martyrs as the nightly news portrays more casualties.  We become outraged when we hear that one of our own has been added to the terrorists watch lists or become a victim of the latest hate crime. We murmur about how our children are becoming more secular, losing their religion day by day. We live in the past nostalgia of our spiritual ancestors when we hear their names mentioned during a Khutbah, praying that one day we will live again in the “Golden Age” of Islam.

None of this is shocking, however, because we’ve heard it all before. We hear it echoing through our minds on a daily basis. These are not new statistics or problems, but realities we have known about and are constantly reminded of. We’ve been told time and again at various Halaqas and Jummahs that the solutions rests within our own community; that we cannot continue to point fingers at the West, laying blame on past grievances. The question is then: Why do we still have these problems?

Muslims, especially in America, have sold themselves into servitude to a new master. We have emancipated ourselves from the guidance of Allah (swt) only to believe that we can create our own paradise here on Earth. We have become slaves to the world. It is because of this that our Ummah and the future of our children, are in jeopardy. Only by understanding this enslavement will we be able to reprioritize our lives, our families, our finances, and most importantly, our faith.

Working for Nothing

One of the obligations from a follower of Islam is to offer charity. While some Muslims show exemplary service to this duty, many either give very little or misdirect their earnings towards over worldly affairs or ineffective causes. It seems that cultural heritage and the need to succeed financially has trumped the importance of worshiping Allah (swt) and following the Sunnah of the Prophet (saws). Take for instance the large sums of money that are dedicated each year to the construction of lavish Masjids. While this used to be a sign of a wealthy and sophisticated Islamically governed state, which held beauty and worship as mutual, it is not a necessary or even practical in our time when Muslims across the world are in more need of education and basic necessities, such as food and shelter. The Prophet (saws) remarked that such use of charity was a signal of the time prior to the Day of Judgment: ’The Hour will not come until people show off in building Masjids.” (Ahmad). The repulsion from the Prophet (saws) for this sort of activity is evident, yet Muslims in America invest millions of dollars a year in the construction and aesthetic renovation of extravagant places of prayer. Likewise, we seem to forget that the Prophets (saws) Mosque, at one of the earliest points in Muslim history, was nothing more than open walls of mud bricks and a palm tree canopy situated in the middle. While the Prophet (saws) was not opposed to beauty, he never compromised practicality or the needs of others.

Another point where our cultural and worldly ties overtake our religious obligations is in the Sunnah of marriage, which in our community has lost much of what makes it Sunnah to begin with. While we should always want what is best for our children, the best doesn’t always mean “the most expensive”. Aside from some of the questionable practices that occur at these weddings, parents from certain backgrounds will spend on average of 20-60 thousand dollars on just one ceremony. Calculate that with the hundreds of marriages that take place each year and you will be shocked as to how much money is being spent on mere exuberance. Of course, other factors contribute to these ghastly amounts, such as the need for some families to “outmatch” others in showing how classy or rich they really are. There is an inherent feeling of shame that comes over some Muslims when they learn that their neighbor’s daughter had a dress or centerpiece that costs twice as much as their own. It seems to elude us that the Prophet (saws) did not approve of this behavior when he clearly stated that, “The most blessed marriage (nikah) is the one with the least expenses” (al-Bayhaqi). In addition, some families tend to ask for mahrs that are unquestionably superfluous even though the Qur’an states explicitly that the mahr should be about making provisions for the wife, “…according to his [the rich] means and the poor according to his – this is the duty for those who do good.“ (2:236).  The Prophet (saws) further stated that, “the best woman is the one whose mahr is the easiest to pay” (al-Haythami).  The fact that we are not following these Sunnahs should make it apparent as to why there are such a great number of unhappy marriages, high divorce rates, and a growing number of domestic violence issues within our community.

In general, however, the focus on personal wealth is perhaps the greatest contributing factor to the lack of support for some of the most basic necessities of the Muslim community. While many first generation Muslim Americans valued strong work ethics and education, their children inherited a much different interpretation of these virtues. Though parents have a right to be concerned for their children’s wellbeing and future success, the reluctance of allowing them to step outside only a few careers may be proving a detriment to the Muslim community at large.  Parents often think that the only careers that guarantee stability (even in an economy facing recession) are medical doctors, engineers, and lawyers. For those students who have ever dreamed to become teachers, journalists, or scientists, it is seen as almost universally unacceptable within the American Ummah. This sort of mentality carries with it heavy burdens, however. One of the greatest of these burdens is that it robs our youth of their capacity to assist our community. While doctors, engineers, and lawyers are certainly needed, we require more successful teachers to teach our youth, instructing them with the principles of Islam, so that they do not have to fall under the negative influence of secular institutions. We need influential journalists who are willing to change the negative perception of Muslims in the media. We need people trained in the sciences of biology and physics so that we can excel in these fields and bring more contributions to science and recognition to the Muslim world. Certainly, these fields may not pay as much as the three previously mentioned, but they are still necessary. One day we are going to be wondering why we have so many doctors to heal the sick, but not enough teachers to heal the ignorant.

Another burden comes with the growing amount of Riba within our society. While we are training these higher professions we are also accumulating mass debt with interest as we send them to professional schools. Medical school alone, after completion, can costs up to half a million dollars. This is an extraordinary amount that can and has afflicted our youth in a monumental way. Besides the fact that they are incurring sin from holding this debt, it also limits them in that they are more focused on having to pay if off than giving their money in Zakat or Sadaqa.

Finally, we cannot forget how this mentality can actualize the potential for inordinate greed. With money comes responsibility that most of our youth are unable to bear, often times exceeding their necessities and overspending. We must remember that this sort of behavior will never satisfy a person: “I asked the Prophet (for some money) and he gave me, and then again I asked him and he gave me, and then again I asked him and he gave me and he then said, “This wealth is (like) green and sweet (fruit), and whoever takes it without greed, Allah will bless it for him, but whoever takes it with greed, Allah will not bless it for him, and he will be like the one who eats but is never satisfied. And the upper (giving) hand is better than the lower (taking) hand” (Bukhari). It is because we focus more on the rewards of the Dunya that we are not educating our children in the Deen and allowing them to succumb to such diseases as greed.

Misdirected Fundraising

We were all horrified by the recent events in Haiti, Chile, and Turkey, where massive earthquakes toppled the foundations of over populated metropolises, killing thousands. We are still overcome with shock at the conflict that transpired for three months during the winter of 2008 to 2009 in Gaza Strip, when nearly 1500 innocent Palestinians were massacred by the uncompromising lawlessness of the Israel government. And we are still struggling with the daily hate crimes and bigotry of Islamophobia in the western world.

By necessity of moral conscious for our fellow man and our Islamic duty, we send aid overseas, either in the form of money or supplies. These are admirable solutions and great examples of what our faith teaches and encourages. The problem, however, is that for many of the issues that we face in this world today as Muslims, we are approaching them in the wrong manner. While it is perfectly fine and justified to send aid overseas, it is only a temporary remedy to the many ailments in the world. The victims of earthquakes do need money, but what they need most is manpower to assist them in clearing rubble, rebuilding homes, acquiring medical attention, and much more. The victims of Israel’s oppression do need money and supplies, but sending these essentials over to them are but in vain, as the Israelis blockade our efforts, not allowing for anything to cross over Palestinian borders. What the Palestinians really need is a combined effort of those citizens under the collective states of the United Nations to change policies so as to prevent Israel from committing any more injustices and violations against human rights. And what the Muslims living in the West need most importantly, is not money to fund lawyers to defend the rights of those being oppressed, but more people to ally with so that these injustices are recognized and prevented at the highest level of government, ensuring that equal rights and protection are guaranteed for all persons living therein. How is it possible to accomplish these goals when we as Muslims are so dispersed throughout the globe, being one of the smallest minorities living in the major world powers? We are outnumbered and do not have enough allies to rally to our cause. Even though we boast about Islam being the fastest growing religion in the world, this is simply not the case. For the most part, our numbers are growing because of our high birth rates. One must not mistake the quantity of believers with their quality, however, as many of these children are being raised in homes that see culture as superior to religion. Further, while it appears that there are a growing number of converts in the West, the reality is that many of them leave Islam within the first year of their taking of the Shahada. Of all the converts to Islam in America alone, 60% leave, never to return. This is not a sign of progress nor is it something to proud of, but a significant blow that brings to light a great deficiency in our community. Why are these converts leaving? Why is that we cannot gain the support necessary to relieve our fellow brothers and sisters from the bigotry of others? Why is it that we cannot function as a unified group, enough to show that we are doing our part to help rid the world of its many evils? The answer to all these dilemmas should be apparent by now. The reason Muslims in America are struggling is because we have our priorities mixed up; we value temporary pleasures and temporary remedies. Our priorities should be focused more on educating our children and informing the non-Muslim world of our beliefs and who we are. Only with these two things will we have a strong enough foundation to begin changing things for the better.

Freedom From Our Oppression

Avveroes Academy, an Islamic private school in Northbrook, IL, closed its doors in 2008, leaving nearly 70 students without a proper education all of which are now either not attending school, are commuting much longer distances for their education, or have been assimilated into a public secular institution. Avveroes is hoping to reopen by 2011. Another school, Furqaan Academy of Bolingbrook, IL, is situated in a small Mosque, which can barely contain its 60 plus students. The academy has, for a year now, desperately tried to purchase a new facility for its growing student body to no avail.

Avveroes Academy and Furqaan Academy both lack the needed funds to function optimally. They are not there as showpieces or for mere convenience, but for the sake of our children and their futures. Illinois is home to perhaps one of the largest Muslim populated communities in America, where some near 1,000,000 live. Why then are we allowing these schools to struggle? If we truly wish to succeed in the West, we need adequate educational facilities, teachers, and good environments, yet it seems our money is being channeled towards lesser priorities. We should be reminded that Allah (swt) makes it clear the status of education over everything else: “And say: Can you put on equal footing those who are learned with those who are not learned?” (39:9).

Likewise, Dawah organizations such as GainPeace and Al-Furqaan Foundation suffer from lack of volunteers and sufficient funds. GainPeace functions as a large Dawah networking service, providing information on Islam through several different mediums, including but not limited to call centers and one on one interaction via presentation tables and personal exchanges on the streets of Chicago. Al-Furqaan Foundation attempts to distribute Qur’ans to individual homes, hospitals, hotels, and retirement homes across America. Both also offer their own classes on Islam and Arabic for non-Muslims, new Muslims, and born Muslims alike. Their goals are admirable and are the precise direction that the Ummah should be moving towards for the sake of the Deen and our futures, yet these organizations are fighting to gain a foothold in the American culture. Are the 6-7 million hardworking Muslims nationwide really unable to assist in these noble endeavors?  How many more converts do we have to lose or how many more of our children have to abandon their religion before we realize something has to be done?

No longer can we avoid our primary responsibilities towards our families and our community. No longer can we push in directions that yield little to no positive results, but merely waste our limited and precious resources. While temporary bandages seem to have an immediate affect, true change takes time and lasts longer. We must save our schools from becoming extinct, we must save our children from the negative influences of western society, and we must educate the non-Muslim world with the truth of Islam. We can only do this once we realize and accept our flaws, working together to no longer recollect the Golden Age of Islam, but to relive it.

Allahu akbar Allahu akbar Allahu akbar
Laa ilaha illa-llah
Allahu akbar Allahu akbar
Wa li-llahi-l-hamd

Allah is Greatest; Allah is Supreme!
There is no absolute reality but Allah
And Allah is Greatest,
And to Him rises up all praise.

In conjunction with Eid ul Fitr, we present to you two new lectures courtesy of our education division, the Furqaan Institute of Quranic Education.

1. Qur’an & Politics: Probing into the Mindset of the Elites
Politics & Qur’an dives deep into the mindset of the elite, using evidences from the Qur’an, as well as political theory, philosophers, and scientists.
Watch the Quran & Politics presentation here

2. Approaching the Subject of the Mahdi
How do we Muslims of the 15th century Hijri understand the Prophet’s (SAW) words when he tells us of the Mahdi and the whole end of times scenario? On a blessed night of the past Ramadan, Shaykh Omar Baloch shared with us the attitude in which we should see this subject.
Watch the lecture here.